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Doctor Who_ The Doomsday Weapon - Malcolm Hulke [61]

By Root 214 0
and Captain Dent's gun was shot front his hand. Within moments half the IMC men were either dead or wounded.

'Surrender,' called Winton. 'You will not be killed.'

'We give in,' Dent shouted. He called to what remained of the IMC guards. 'Throw down your guns!' The IMC men dropped their guns, and raised their hands in surrender. Now, from all sides, colonists appeared from behind the boulders. Winton ran forward to the Doctor and Jo. 'Are you two all right?'

Jo let Winton help her to her feet. 'But the spaceship,' she said, 'it exploded.'

'Captain Dent left one lookout to make sure no one should escape by leaving the ship,' said Winton. 'I stayed behind and knocked him out. That let all the others get out of the ship to safety before it took off.'

'Did you make it take off by remote-control?' asked the Doctor.

Winton shook his head. 'No. John Ashe went up with it. He insisted on doing so. He gave his life for the sake of the rest of us.' He shrugged. 'Maybe he was a bit crazy.'

'Perhaps,' said the Doctor, 'or a saint'

The Doctor's words were drowned by the thunderclap roar of a spaceship in flight. Everyone looked up, and for a few seconds they saw the Master's TARDIS still looking like an Adjudicator's spaceship as it raced into the dawn sky.

'You let him get away!' said Jo.

'Ah, well,' said the Doctor, 'I suppose we all make mistakes sometimes.' He turned to Winton again. 'What are you going to do about your prisoners?'

'Send them back to Earth,' Winton said; but his attention was still focussed on the sky. 'Look, clouds!' He pointed to a formation of clouds that was sweeping in from the west. 'There have never been clouds like that before,' he said, 'not since we came here.'

The Doctor looked towards the oncoming clouds. 'You know something,' he said to Jo, 'I think it's going to rain.'

21 Mission Completed


The colonists stood in a circle around the big grave they had dug a little way from the main dome. Most of the IMC men had been safely locked up in their spaceship, ready to be sent back to Earth. But Captain Dent, Caldwell, and three guards were present at the ceremony to bury their own dead. Colonists and IMC guards killed in the final battle were laid side by side in the grave. Gentle rain fell from the clouds, soaking the colonist's poor clothing and making the dusty soil turn into mud. When all the bodies were in the grave everybody turned to Winton, expecting him now to speak as John Ashe had done before. He turned to the Doctor. 'You say something,' he pleaded.

'No,' said the Doctor, 'it has to come from one of you. This is your land now.'

Winton turned to face the colonists and the IMC men who stood sullenly as prisoners on the other side of the communal grave. 'I don't know how to make speeches,' he said, 'but I can tell you how I feel. Our people didn't die for nothing. To get anything worth having, like freedom, sometimes you have to fight, and sometimes you have to die. So now it's up to us to make this colony work, for the sake of the people who died.' He paused, then turned to the five IMC prisoners. 'Your people died for the wrong things, but I'm still sorry they got killed.' He looked down into the grave. 'There's one man missing - John Ashe. We can't bury him, but we can always remember him. He died so that we could live.'

No one spoke for a long time. They just stood, looking into the grave, remembering. Then the first man picked up some of the muddy soil and threw it into the grave, and each of the rest followed this ritual in turn.

Winton gave orders for the IMC prisoners to be escorted back to their spaceship. But Caldwell stepped forward from the IMC group. 'You've lost some good men,' he said to Winton. 'You're going to need more people to make this colony a success. I'm a good engineer. How about it?'

'We're going to declare an independent republic,' said Winton. 'Do you want to be an outlaw?'

Caldwell smiled. 'I told you, I'm a good engineer. You're going to need people like me.'

'All right. Let's go back to the dome and talk.' Winton led Caldwell away, and the two

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